Monday, August 30, 2010
Little Red Riding Hood (Art by Pablo Ramirez)
In our last post we saw Peter Pan turned into a girl (and Tinker Bell turned into a man!), now with today's post we find loveable Little Red Riding Hood turned into a sinister, black-eyed alien! Not really. It's just some wonderfully surreal examples by childrens book illustrator Pablo Ramirez from 1965. His style isn't everyone's cup of tea, but personally I love the bizarre, angular visuals and dynamic choices in color and texturing (and you definitely don't want to overlook details like the otherwordly foliage, and especially in one case a clock on a wall that is just about the craziest thing you will ever see!) Pablo's approach is deceptively cute and bursting with a haunting dream realm life of its own, some of you may actually find it nightmare inducing... but for me, anything he provided art for that I was lucky enough to read as a kid I have never forgotten.
Love it, Karswell. Pablo has a very Animator-ly approach. He probably inspired a lot of Disney background artists~!
ReplyDeleteHoly crap. I've never heard of this guy, so wow and thank you. I love the pudgy arms and legs on these figures. And while I see where you're coming from when you say the visuals are angular, it fits so hand-in-glove with the outer swoops and curvilinear folds and textures of the focal areas that it hardly seems pretentiously geometric at all.
ReplyDeleteAnd I am totally in love with the fact that he illustrated this whole story with only the rarest drop of red. That's guts. Pages seven and eight are especially gobsmacking.
Off to the internet to find more.
let's see- characters with nothing but black holes for eyes, strips of cloth that look like raw flesh next to scissors, flowers that look like they're crawling toward you, a chamber pot filled with something green(!)...nope, nothing nightmarish here!
ReplyDeleteLove the arch of dead trees and black, black sky (and ground) around LRRH about seven panels in. ALso, it looks like she's saying somthing. As the good Prof. says: Nightmares.
ReplyDeleteHaha, glad everyone enjoyed this one... at least it sounds like everyone did.
ReplyDeleteRamirez' work reminds me of Mary Blair. This is gorgeous!
ReplyDeletethis style is really amazing!
ReplyDeletethat second to last image with what looks like the grandma/wolf in the bed with just the two white dots for eyes is pretty creepy! and i love the chamber pot on the side of the bed.
Someone wants to see that Fred cat!
ReplyDeleteoh there's someone else who wants to see it? who? i bet no one wants to see it as bad as me.
ReplyDeletebut that's NOT the reason i'm skulking around.